Makeup MVPs 2013: Cheeks

I am so excited to be sharing with you all of my top favorite cheek products from 2013. These are all the blushes, bronzers and highlighters that I loved the most throughout the year. These are tried and true favorites. The ones I always go back to. My MVPs. And I gotta tell you, I had a really hard time reining myself in and keeping a limit to how many products I shared with you all. I LOVE blush, and there are so many amazing blushes out there, especially from the drugstore. But I kept myself calm and shared just 4 blushes, 3 highlighters and 2 bronzers, as well as the tools that I use most often to apply them, so here we go!

Blush: Like I said, it was all I could do to narrow down my favorite blushes from 2013. I love these brands in general for blush but I also included my favorite colors from the line. I highly recommend all of these.

I love the Hard Candy Fox in a Box blushes so much! I heard that these were going to be discontinued but I continue to see them at my local walmart, so apparently they have not been. I love the packaging on these. They remind me a lot of the Benefit Box powders but for a fraction of the price. My favorite one is the one in hot flash. It's four colors, a pale baby pink, a neutral light brown, a brighter pink and a bright fuchsia. Each of these colors can be used on their own but I love to swirl them together to get a nice fuchsia color. It's highly pigmented and a little goes a long way, but it's a gorgeous flush of color especially in the winter. It gives you that just came in from the cold look. Love it!

The wet n Wild Color Icon Blushes are amazing. They are super affordable and highly pigmented. They are soft without being incredibly powdery and they blend beautifully. I love the one in Heather Silk. It's a deeper berry color that is beautiful on my pale skin.  It's got no shimmer, so it's very natural. I can't say enough good things about this blush.

The Elf studio blushes are probably my all time favorite blushes from the drugstore, because there's a wide variety of shades and at just 3 bucks a pop, you can buy them all without feeling incredibly guilty. I have 5 or 6 shades now, and they are all pigmented and pretty. They can be a little powdery but nothing you can't work with. One of my favorites is the blush in Candid Coral. It's a really natural summer-y shade that I think is wearable on just about every skintone! Love it!

Lastly, I really fell in love with the tarte 12 hour amazonian clay blushes this year. These babies are pricey, I'm not gonna lie. At around 25 bucks a pop they can really break the bank, but I've managed to always buy mine on sale, so that I pay half that price. These blushes are so beautiful, apply silky smooth, are incredibly pigmented and really last all day! If you can afford to pick one up I highly recommend that you do because they really are amazing. I love the one in exposed the most. It's a beautiful nude blush that I never would have purchased if it wasn't for recommendations on youtube but I just adore the flush it gives my skin. It's completely matte, but not flat. You just have to try it!

Highlighters- I tend to really like more natural looking highlighters on me. I use a lot of highlighting concealers and things, but when I really want an added bit of highlight to my skin, I pull out my powder highlights and I have found a few that I absolutely love and always find myself coming back to. These are my MVPs.

I love the physicians formula happy booster blush in natural. This is technically a blush, but it's got a gorgeous sheen and not a ton of color so I tend to apply it over top of my blushes for a natural glow that I just love. It's so beautiful. It's not powdery or cakey. It just adds a nice sheen to my skin that is really beautiful.

The Elf Baked Blush in pinktastic is another one that is marketed as a blush but it's really just a beautiful highlight shade for me. It's a light shimmery pink that is gorgeous swept on top of the cheek bones and down the nose. It catches the light beautifully without being a total shimmer bomb. I can't recommend this one enough.

Another one from Elf that I love is actually marketed as a bronzer, and it's the Elf Studio Golden Bronzer. This is just a quad of light, sheer colors that when swept together makes a beautiful natural highlight that I have seen compared to the Dior Amber Diamond Highlight that is so popular with youtube beauty gurus. It's just a beautiful more golden toned highlight that looks amazing.

And now moving on to bronzers. I am a pale girl. I like to describe my skin tone as one shade up from marshmallow pale. So bronzers are necessary but ones that are too dark look positively muddy and gross on me, so I need a really natural matte bronzer, and these two fit the bull perfectly.

The first one is the NYC smoothskin bronzing face powder in sunny. I have used this for years and I absolutely love it. It's a very natural light brown shade that is completely matte. It's light enough to use as an all over bronzing color but I can also use it just for contouring by adding just a bit more. It's a super affordable option and it's perfect for super pale girls like me, but can be used for medium skin tones too, in my opinion.

The other one that is a great shade for my pale skin is the Elf Baked Bronzer in St. Lucia. It's a light bronze color with the tiniest bit of sheen that makes it look super natural on me. I really like this bronzer beause it's easy to apply and super easy to blend so it doesn't look like I have bronzer on at all. It's very natural and another super affordable option that I wouldn't ever want to be be without.

So those are all of my favorite cheek products. Now let's talk a little bit about my favorite tools to apply said products. My favorite blush brush is the Sigma f50 duo fiber brush. I find that this picks up just enough product. Not too much and not too little. It's also really good for applying cream blush. It's soft without being so soft that product applies everywhere. It's just a really nice brush. I haven't found my perfect brush for applying bronzer yet. I tend to just go for a fluffier brush when I am applying it all over my face, and a more concentrated brush when I am contouring. But since I don't have an absolute favorite, I decided not to list one here. I do have a favorite brush for highlighting though. It's the Elf small stipple brush. This thing is amazing. It's small brush head makes it the perfect brush for applying highlighter to the tops of the cheek bones and down my nose. It's soft without being too soft and this little brush also does double duty in that it's great for applying both powder and cream products. I highly recommend it.

So there ya have it! Those are my MVPs for my cheeks! I hope that you found this helpful! And I hope you will check back soon for the next installment of my MVP products for 2013, when I share with you my favorite products for eyes! Can't wait!!